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This week, a great new campaign titled “GMO Answers” has launched, and it looks to be one of the best new resources for consumers on all things GMO-related. As reported by the New York Times, the initiative focuses on providing factual, accessible information to consumers – led by the centerpiece website GMOAnswers.com. We’ve talked about the importance of transparency in the ag-biotech industry before, and transparency is a key motivation behind the GMO Answers campaign. The industry readily admits it hasn’t always done the best job communicating about GMOs, and invites consumers to ask the “tough questions”. GMO Answers wasRead More

As regular readers will know, my husband Neal and I are, above all else apple growers to the core. We spend way more time in our orchard than behind our desks, and truly embrace the orchardist lifestyle. When we founded OSF back in 1996, it certainly wasn’t to make a quick buck – 17 years later and we still have a couple years to wait before the Arctic® apple, our first product, is available in stores! Our motivation is to help our fellow growers and apple industry members produce more high-quality fruit and help address the flat-to-declining apple consumption acrossRead More

We’ve been growing apples in the beautiful Okanagan Valley for 18 years and have loved every minute of it. More often than not, we’re up before the sun in order to look after our fruit, and if you read Louisa’s post from last fall you know that we truly embrace the orchardist lifestyle. We didn’t found Okanagan Specialty Fruits because we don’t like apples the way they are, or to make a quick, easy buck (believe me when I say that nothing is quick or easy about bringing Arctic® apples to market!). We did it because we’ve seen declining appleRead More

Following up on our January blog, we would like to further address why Arctic®, conventional and organic trees can successfully coexist. As previously explained (see blog and FAQ), apple trees are propogated by grafting, not seed, are pollinated by bees, not wind, and don’t escape and grow in the wild. The risk of cross-pollination is minimal, and we further mitigate that risk with our strict stewardship standards (e.g., requirements for hive placement, buffer rows). And, in the unlikely event cross-pollination did occur, only traces of Arctic material would be present in some of the seeds. Consider the statement by RobertRead More

One of our website FAQs addresses the topic of co-existence: Will Arctic® apple trees be a threat to conventional or organic apple trees, by crossbreeding with trees growing near them? For a variety of reasons, the answer is “NO!” Admittedly, co-existence has been an issue for some genetically-modified row crops. However, apples are very different from row crops, so it is not accurate to draw comparisons. First, apple trees aren’t “weedy” – they don’t escape and grow in the wild like some other crops can. For millennia we apple growers have created new apple trees via vegetative propagation, not by plantingRead More